U.S. Music Consumption Up 12.5% in 2017, R&B/Hip-Hop Is Year's Most Popular Genre

The figure adds together traditional album sales, track equivalent album units, and on-demand streaming equivalent album units from both video and audio streams.

According to Nielsen Music, total music consumption in the U.S. in 2017 climbed 12.5 percent to 636.65 million units (up from 566.1 million). That figure adds together traditional album sales, track equivalent album units, and on-demand streaming equivalent album units from both video and audio streams. One track equivalent album unit is equal to 10 tracks sold. One streaming equivalent album unit is equal to 1,500 on-demand streams.

In terms of audio-only consumption (removing on-demand video streams from the equation), the gain was 10.2 percent, rising to 491.55 million units (from 446.12 million).

Nielsen Music’s 2017 tracking year ran from Dec. 30, 2016, through Dec. 28, 2017. Numbers in this story are rounded. Nielsen Music began electronically tracking music sales and data in 1991.

Additionally, the R&B/hip-hop genre represented 24.5 percent of all music consumption in the U.S. — the largest share of any genre and the first time R&B/hip-hop has led this measurement for a calendar year. (The 24.5 percent share represents a combination of album sales, track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units — including both on-demand audio and video streams.) The rock genre is in second place for the year, with a 20.8 percent share.

R&B/hip-hop also led Nielsen’s mid-year report — the first time R&B/hip-hop had overtaken rock as music’s biggest genre at mid-year.

Seven of the year's top 10 most popular albums were R&B/hip-hop efforts, led by Kendrick Lamar's DAMN., which was the No. 2 overall album, according to Nielsen Music. The set earned 2.747 million equivalent album units in 2017.

DAMN.'s 2.747 million equivalent album units figure is a multi-metric consumption total, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and on-demand audio streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The multi-metric formula is also used to compile the weekly Billboard 200 albums chart, which ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S.